When Mrs. Zelotes was made acquainted with the plan for sending
Ellen to Vassar she astonished Fanny. Fanny ran over the next
morning, after Andrew had gone to work, to tell her mother-in-law.
She sat a few minutes in the sitting-room, where the old lady was
knitting, before she unfolded the burden of her errand.
"Cynthia Lennox came to our house last night with Robert Lloyd," she
said, finally.
"Did they?" remarked Mrs. Zelotes, who had known perfectly well that
they had come, having recognized the Lennox carriage in the
moonlight, and having been ever since devoured with curiosity, which
she would have died rather than betray.
"Yes, they did," said Fanny. Then she added, after a pause which
gave wonderful impressiveness to the news, "Cynthia Lennox wants to
send Ellen to college--to Vassar College."
Then she jumped, for the old woman seemed to spring at her like
released wire.
"Send her to college!" said she. "What does she want to send her to
college for? What right has Cynthia Lennox got to send Ellen
Brewster anywhere?"
Fanny stared at her dazedly.
"What right has she got interfering?" demanded Mrs. Zelotes again.
"Why," replied Fanny, stammering, "she thought Ellen was so smart.
She heard her valedictory, and the school-teacher had talked about
her, what a good scholar she was, and she thought it would be nice
for her to go to college, and she should be very much obliged
herself, and feel that we were granting her a great pleasure and
privilege if we allowed her to send Ellen to Vassar."
All unconsciously Fanny imitated to the life Cynthia's soft elegance
of speech and language.
"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Zelotes; but still she said it not so much
angrily as doubtfully. "It's the first time I ever heard of Cynthia
Lennox doing such a thing as that," said she. "I never knew she was
given to sending girls to college. I never heard of her giving
anything to anybody."
Fanny looked mysteriously at her mother-in-law with sudden
confidence. "Look here," she said.
"What?"
The two women looked at each other, and neither said a word, but the
meaning of one flashed to the other like telegraphy.
"Do you s'pose that's it?" said Mrs. Zelotes, her old face relaxing
into half-shamed, half-pleased smiles.
"Yes, I do," said Fanny, emphatically.
"You do?"
"Yes, I 'ain't a doubt of it."
"He did act as if he couldn't take his eyes off her at the
exhibition," agreed Mrs. Zelotes, reflectively; "mebbe you're
right."
"I know I'm right just as well as if I'd seen it."
"Well, mebbe you are. What does Andrew say?"
"Oh, he wishes he was the one to do it."
"Of course he does--he's a Brewster," said his mother.
"But he's got sense enough to be pleased that Ellen has got the
chance."
"He ain't any more pleased than I be at anything that's a good
chance for Ellen," said the grandmother; but all the same, after
Fanny had gone, her joy had a sharp sting for her. She was not one
who could take a gift to heart without feeling its sharp edge.
Had Ellen's sentiment been analyzed, she felt in something the same
way that her grandmother did. However, she had begun to dream
definitely about Robert, and the reflection had come, too, that this
might make her more his equal, as nearly his equal as Maud
Hemingway.
Maud Hemingway went to college, and so would she. Of the minor
accessories of wealth she thought not so much. She looked at her
hands, which were very small and as delicately white as flowers, and
reflected with a sense of comfort, of which she was ashamed, that
she would not need ever to stain them with leather now. She looked
at the homeward stream of dingy girls from the shops, and thought
with a sense of escape that she would never have to join them; but
she was conscious of loving Abby better, and Maria, who had also
entered Lloyd's. Abby, when she heard the news about Vassar, had
looked at her with a sort of fierce exultation.
"Thank the Lord, you're out of it, anyhow!" she cried, fervently, as
a soul might in the midst of flames.
Maria had smiled at her with the greatest sweetness and a certain
wistfulness. Maria was growing delicate, and seemed to inherit her
father's consumptive tendencies.
"I am so glad, Ellen," she said. Then she added, "I suppose we
sha'n't see so much of you."
"Of course we sha'n't, Maria Atkins," interposed Abby, "and it won't
be fitting we should. It won't be best for Ellen to associate with
shop-girls when she's going to Vassar College."
But Ellen had cast an impetuous arm around a neck of each.
"If ever I do such a thing as that!" said she. "If ever I turn a
cold shoulder to either of you for such a reason as that! What's
Vassar College to hearts? That's at the bottom of everything in this
world, anyhow. I guess you'll see it won't make any difference
unless you keep on thinking such things. If you do--if you think I
can do anything like that--I won't love you so much."
Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation. Suddenly this
ignoble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her
to resentment. But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.
"I never did, I never did!" she cried. "Don't I know what you are
made of, Ellen Brewster? Don't you think I know? But after all, it
might be better for you if you were worse. That was all I meant."
Ellen, one afternoon, set out in her pretty challis, a white ground
with long sprays of blue flowers running over it, and a blue ribbon
at her neck and waist, and her leghorn hat with white ribbons, and a
knot of forget-me-nots under the brim. She wore her one pair of nice
gloves, too, but those she did not put on until she reached the
corner of the street where Cynthia lived. Then she rubbed them on
carefully, holding up her challis skirts under one arm.
Cynthia was at home, seated on the back veranda, in a rattan chair,
with a book which she was not reading. Ellen stood before her, in
her cheap attire, which she wore with an air which seemed to make it
precious, such faith she had in it. Ellen regarded her coarse
blue-flowered challis with an innocent admiration which seemed
almost able to glorify it into silk. Cynthia took in at a glance the
exceeding commonness of it all; she saw the hat, the like of which
could be seen in the milliners' windows at fabulously low prices;
the foam of spurious lace and the spray of wretched blue flowers
made her shudder. "The poor child, she must have something better
than that," she thought, and insensibly she also thought that the
girl must lose her evident faith in the splendor of such attire;
must change her standard of taste. She rose and greeted Ellen
sweetly, though somewhat reservedly. When the two were seated
opposite each other, Cynthia tried to talk pleasantly, but all the
time with a sub-consciousness as one will have of some deformity
which must be ignored. The girl looked so common to her in this
array that she began to have a hopeless feeling of disgust about it
all. Was it not manifestly unwise to try to elevate a girl who took
such evident satisfaction in a gown like that, in a hat like that?
Ellen wore her watch and chain ostentatiously. The watch was too
large for a chatelaine, but she had looped the heavy chain across
her bosom, and pinned it with the brooch which Abby Atkins had given
her, so it hung suspended. Cynthia riveted her eyes helplessly upon
that as she talked.
"I hope you are having a pleasant vacation," said she, as she looked
at the watch, and all at once Ellen knew.
Ellen replied that she was having a very pleasant vacation, then she
plunged at once into the subject of her call, though with inward
trembling.
"Miss Lennox," said she--and she followed the lines of a little
speech which she had been rehearsing to herself all the way
there--"I am very grateful to you for what you propose doing for me.
It will make a difference to me during my whole life. I cannot begin
to tell you how grateful I am."
"I am very grateful to be allowed to do it," replied Cynthia, with
her unfailing refrain of gentle politeness, but a kindly glance was
in her eyes. Something in the girl's tone touched her. It was
exceedingly earnest, with the simple earnestness of childhood.
Moreover, Ellen was regarding her with great, steadfast, serious
eyes, like a baby's who shrinks and yet will have her will of
information.
"I wanted to say," Ellen continued--and her voice became insensibly
hushed, and she cast a glance around at the house and the leafy
grounds, as if to be sure that no one was within hearing--"that I
should never under any circumstances have said anything regarding
what happened so long ago. That I never have and never should have,
that I never thought of doing such a thing."
Then the elder woman's face flushed a burning red, and she knew at
once what the girl had suspected. "You might proclaim it on the
house-tops if it would please you," she cried out, vehemently. "If
you think--if you think--"
"Oh, I do not!" cried Ellen, in an agony of pleading. "Indeed, I do
not. It was only that--I--feared lest you might think I would be
mean enough to tell."
"I would have told, myself, long ago if there had been only myself
to consider," said Cynthia, still red with anger, and her voice
strained. All at once she seemed to Ellen more like the woman of her
childhood. "Yes, I would," said she, hotly--"I will now."
"Oh, I beg you not!" cried Ellen.
"I will go with you this minute and tell your mother," Cynthia said,
rising.
Ellen sprang up and moved towards her as if to push her back in her
chair. "Oh, please don't!" she cried. "Please don't. You don't know
mother; and it would do no good. It was only because I wondered if
you could have thought I would tell, if I would be so mean."
"And you thought, perhaps, I was bribing you not to tell, with
Vassar College," Cynthia said, suddenly. "Well, you have suspected
me of something which was undeserved."
"I am very sorry," Ellen said. "I did not suspect, really, but I do
not know why you do this for me." She said the last with her steady
eyes of interrogation on Cynthia's face.
"You know the reasons I have given."
"I do not think they were the only ones," Ellen replied, stoutly. "I
do not think my valedictory was so good as to warrant so much, and I
do not think I am so smart as to warrant so much, either."
Cynthia laughed. She sat down again. "Well," she said, "you are not
one to swallow praise greedily." Then her tone changed. "I owe it
to you to tell you why I wish to do this," she said, "and I will.
You are an honest girl, with yourself as well as with other
people--too honest, perhaps, and you deserve that I should be honest
with you. I am not doing this for you in the least, my dear."
Ellen stared at her.
"No, I am not," repeated Cynthia. "You are a very clever, smart
girl, I am sure, and it will be a nice thing for you to have a
better education, and be able to take a higher place in the world,
but I am not doing it for you. When you were a little child I would
have done everything, given my life almost, for you, but I never
care so much for children when they grow up. I am not doing this for
you, but for your mother."
"My mother?" said Ellen.
"Yes, your mother. I know what agony your mother must have been in,
that time when I kept you, and I want to atone in some way. I think
this is a good way. I don't think you need to hesitate about letting
me do it. You also owe a little atonement to your mother. It was not
right for you to run away, in the first place."
"Yes, I was very naughty to run away," Ellen said, starting. She
rose, and held out her hand. "I hope you will forgive me," she said.
"I am very grateful, and it will make my father and mother happier
than anything else could, but indeed I don't think--it is so long
ago--that there was any need--"
"I do, for the sake of my own distress over it," Cynthia said,
shortly. "Suppose, now, we drop the subject, my dear. There is a
taint in the New England blood, and you have it, and you must fight
it. It is a suspicion of the motives of a good deed which will often
poison all the good effect from it. I don't know where the taint
came from. Perhaps the Pilgrim Fathers', being necessarily always on
the watch for the savage behind his gifts, have affected their
descendants. Anyway, it is there. I suppose I have it."
"I am very sorry," said Ellen.
"I also am sorry," said Cynthia. "I did you a wrong, and your mother
a wrong, years ago. I wonder at myself now, but you don't know the
temptation. You will never know how you looked to me that night."
Cynthia's voice took on a tone of ineffable tenderness and yearning.
Ellen saw again the old expression in her face; suddenly she looked
as before, young and beautiful, and full of a boundless attraction.
The girl's heart fairly leaped towards her with an impulse of
affection. She could in that minute have fallen at her feet, have
followed her to the end of the world. A great love and admiration
which had gotten its full growth in a second under the magic of
a look and a tone shook her from head to foot. She went close to
Cynthia, and leaned over her, putting her round, young face down to
the elder woman's. "Oh, I love you, I love you," whispered Ellen,
with a fervor which was strange to her.
But Cynthia only kissed her lightly on her cheek, and pushed her
away softly. "Thank you, my dear," she said. "I am glad you came
and spoke to me frankly, and I am glad we have come to an
understanding."
Ellen, after she had taken her leave, was more in love than she had
ever been in her life, and with another woman. She thought of
Cynthia with adoration; she dreamed about her; the feeling of
receiving a benefit from her hand became immeasurably sweet.